Entrance Lodge at Louth Cemetery, Louth, Lincolnshire

Summary

The Entrance Lodge to Louth Cemetery in Lincolnshire, an early and influential design by the Louth-born architect Pearson Bellamy, completed in 1853.

Description

A Gothic-style lodge to a mid-C19 cemetery in Louth, Lincolnshire which forms the principal entrance to the cemetery, believed to have been completed in 1853, to the designs of the Louth-born architect Pearson Bellamy.

MATERIALS: the lodge is built of red brick with ashlar stone dressings and a slate roof covering.

PLAN: the building is roughly L-shaped on plan, with a tall, long principal range aligned east to west which incorporates the entrance archway, side off-shuts and an attached octagonal tower to the south of the entrance arch. Attached retaining walls flank the archway on both front and rear elevations.

EXTERIOR: the lodge stands embedded in sloping ground with the principal entrance elevation addressing Upgate. The entrance facade incorporates a tall stepped and pointed arch formed of moulded brick which gives access to a short tunnel formed beneath the two floors of residential accommodation above. This tunnel gives access to the cemetery, and was created as a cutting through rising ground, the adjacent land restrained by tall retaining walls on either side of the front and rear archways. The arch retains original decorative wooden railed entrance gates. Above the arch is a two-light chamfer mullioned and transomed oriel window below a steeply-pitched roof. Above this are paired lancets with ashlar surrounds, and above them, an inset panel with a blind quatrefoil bearing the inscription ERECTED 185- (the final numeral, believed to be '3', now missing). The date panel is set below a low dentilled parapet with moulded ashlar copings and a central gablet. This incorporates a stone panel with carved decoration depicting a rampant animal and rider set against a shield motif.

To the right of the archway is an octagonal stair tower which incorporates a spiral stair. A ground floor doorway with an ashlar surround, shouldered lintel and a flanking lancet provides access to the stair and the two storey dwelling above the archway. The tower has a single lancet to each storey level and a crenellated parapet set above a dentilled string course. To the left of the archway is a lower section of the front elevation which forms the facade of a side offshut, with a sloping section of ashlar-coped parapet and single lancets to each floor.

The rear elevation is more plainly detailed. The design of the eastern arch to the tunnel beneath the lodge matches that to the entrance front, but now has timber supports, as the arch appears to be failing. Extending eastwards are tall sloping brick retaining walls which also buttress the arch. The tall east gable of the main range has lower off-shuts to either side, that to the south with an angled end wall, that to the north set back from the main gable, with the roof pitches to the central range extended to cover both off-shuts. The gable has a canted oriel above the rear arch supported on a shallow bracket. Above is a single-light window with a shallow arched head and a quoined surround.

There is a entrance doorway to the first floor on the south side of the building. This has a plain surround and a segmental chamfered brick arched head. The doorway is approached via a narrow access passage between two attached single-storey outbuildings. It is not clear whether these are additions, but the west wall of the western outbuilding forms a screen wall to the south of the tower, and shares the dentil detailing of the main building. Both outbuildings have been altered. The approaches to both front and rear arches are defined by substantial brick retaining walls. Those to the entrance elevation are widely splayed and curved, and slope downwards from the arch to low terminal piers with stepped pyramidal caps. The walls are coped with moulded bricks, set above a dentil course. The walls to the rear arch are straight rather than splayed, with plain triangular copings, and slope downwards from a short level section extending from the archway.

INTERIOR: the interior plan of the building remains substantially intact and this is of special interest, is the individual rooms have been remodelled with some C20 fixtures and fittings. A single C19 hearth surround survives in an upper floor bedroom, and there are a number of plain planked doors. These and the spiral staircase are some of the surviving features of interest within the building.

History

A new cemetery was established at Upgate, Louth, in 1854, on a ten acre site to the south of the town. Two years later, the Louth Burial Board was established to administer the cemetery, and two mortuary chapels were built to the west of the entrance lodge to the cemetery on Upgate. The lodge and the mortuary chapels were designed by Pearson Bellamy who went on to form a successful and prolific architectural practice with John Spencer Hardy. The Louth cemetery commission was one of Bellamy's earliest designs, and the entrance lodge, believed to have been completed in 1853, was a powerful and striking design, requiring visitors to enter the cemetery by means of a short tunnel passing beneath the building, which is sited on sloping ground, before passing on to the mortuary chapels and the cemetery landscape. In 1884, the cemetery was enlarged by a further ten acres on the west side of the site, and remains in that form to the present day. The interior of the lodge has undergone some C20 alteration and extension, and was unoccupied at the time of inspection (18th June 2019).

Reasons for Listing

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION

The Entrance Lodge to Louth Cemetery on Upgate, Louth, in Lincolnshire, designed by the Louth-born architect Pearson Bellamy, and completed in 1853, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a distinguished example of mid-C19 cemetery architecture which has suffered little alteration, and which survives as a prominent and architecturally distinctive component of Louth's cemetery landscape as laid out in 1853.

* as an early and influential design by the architect Pearson Bellamy, who, together with John Spencer Hardy went on to form a successful and prolific architectural practice, producing designs for public buildings throughout the Midlands region between 1853 and 1896, several examples of which are already listed.

External Links

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